scholarly journals ‘CEO equals man’: Gender and informal organisational practices in English sport governance

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (7) ◽  
pp. 1009-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy V Piggott ◽  
Elizabeth CJ Pike
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Specific Detail ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Organisational Values ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Alternative Practices

Despite the benefits of diversity amongst sport leaders increasingly being argued by both researchers and practitioners, English sport governance remains gender-imbalanced at all levels of leadership. Within this article, we aim to explore how informal organisational practices within two established English national governing bodies impact upon gender equity and gender balance within their governance. This is important to raise awareness of the power of informal organisational practices to favour one gender over another. We present findings generated through a multi-method qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Official documents from the two organisations were also drawn upon to add specific detail or fill information gaps during the collection, analysis and write-up of data. Throughout the article, we draw upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice to focus on the ways in which cultural resources, processes and institutions hold sport leaders within gendered hierarchies of dominance. We found that informal organisational practices contribute to the reinforcement of gendered structures of dominance which privilege (dominant) men and masculinity, and normalise and naturalise the positions of men as leaders. Some examples of resistance against inequitable informal practices were also evident. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theorising, we highlight that alternative practices must be valued more highly by the organisation than current problematic practices in order for them to become legitimised, habitual and sustainable. We suggest that one way of achieving this is by linking gender-equitable governance to organisational values and performance to provide motivation for organisations to make genuine, sustainable change.

Champions of gender equality: female and male executives as leaders of gender change

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anne de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Female Leaders ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Partnership Model ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine male and female executives as leaders “championing” gender change interventions. It problematizes current exhortations for male leaders to lead gender change, much as they might lead any other business-driven change agenda. It argues that organizational gender scholarship is critical to understanding the gendered nature of championing. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on a feminist qualitative research project examining the efficacy of a gender intervention in a university and a policing institution. Interviews with four leaders have been chosen from the larger study for analysis against the backdrop of material from interviewees and the participant observation of the researcher. It brings a social constructionist view of gender and Acker’s gendering processes to bear on understanding organizational gender change. Findings – The sex/gender of the leader is inescapably fore-fronted by the gender change intervention. Gendered expectations and choices positioned men as powerful and effective champions while undermining the effectiveness of the woman in this study. Research limitations/implications – Further research examining male and female leaders capacity to champion gender change is required. Practical implications – This research identifies effective champion behaviors, provides suggestions for ensuring that gender equity interventions are well championed and proposes a partnership model where senior men and women play complementary roles leading gender change. Originality/value – This paper is of value to practitioners and scholars. It draws attention to contemporary issues of leadership and gender change, seeking to bridge the gap between theory and practice that undermines our change efforts.

scholarly journals Técnicos de Desporto de Natureza: Contributos para o Entendimento das Problemáticas do Setor

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Ricardo Melo ◽  
Diogo Leite
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Single Male ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Training Scheme ◽  
Professional Profile ◽  
Part Time ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Academic Qualifications

The purpose of this article is to present the sociodemographic and professional profile of nature sports technicians who work in the Region of Coimbra, to identify the main problems of the sector and the profession felt by these technicians, and to present strategic recommendations for the improvement of the setor. For this, a case study was developed, whose data collection was carried out through the application of 30 semi-structured interviews to a sample of technicians who collaborated with touristic animation companies based in the Region of Coimbra, complemented with six months of participant observation in one of these companies of the referred region. The interviewed technicians are young, single, male individuals, with high academic qualifications, who collaborate in part-time in the companies with which they collaborate, with low remuneration resulting from the performance of the various functions they perform (technical, logistical, secretarial, and management), therefore working on other professional activities throughout the year. When analyzing the main problems identified in this study, the creation of an association of sports technicians of nature and tourist entertainment, the introduction of a training scheme, the production of legislation related to the regulation of access to the profession, and the implementation of a system for monitoring and evaluating the competence and performance of technicians are suggested.

Women Chiefs and Post War Reconstruction in Sierra Leone

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Lynda R. Day
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Culturally Based ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War ◽  
Traditional Structures

This paper examines the role of women chiefs in post war reconstruction in Sierra Leone, particularly the connection between women chiefs with the movement for women’s equality and economic empowerment. Contrary to scholarship which views culturally based traditional structures, including chieftaincy, as counterproductive to progressive change, I argue that traditional women chiefs have contributed to the movement for gender justice and gender equity and could be key to shaping and promoting both an agenda and an ideology for women’s social and political advancement on a local level. The study is based on fieldwork conducted in Sierra Leone from 1982 to 2012 and includes semi-structured interviews with women chiefs and other key players before, during, and after the war, as well as sources such as newspaper articles, journal and book publications and archival materials.

scholarly journals Chaos in the Clinic:Applications of Choas Theory to a Qualitative Study of a Veterinary Practice

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Craven Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Observation Study ◽  
Site Analysis ◽  
Veterinary Practice ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Veterinary Technicians ◽  
And Gender

This paper is the result of a twelve hour participant observation study of a local, private veterinary practice in southeastern Pennsylvania. Field notes and semi-structured interviews, the result of naturally occurring conversation between me and practice members, were taken over a twelve week period, one hour of site visit each week. Using a grounded theory methodology, categories of social interaction among veterinarians, veterinary technicians, clerical staff, owners and animal clients were assembled, discarded and re-assembled. The resulting categories were analyzed using the conceptual framework of chaos theory and the principles of uncertainty. It appears that the most striking feature of the intra-site analysis centers around the chaotic notion of similarity of patterns or fractals, those patterns that repeat at smaller and smaller scales. In this micro-sociological analysis, these patterns or fractals are presented as behavior patterns within this veterinary practice. The analysis of the similarity of behavior is based on intra-practice comparative data of roles and status and gender. The triangulation of owner, veterinary worker and animal is a fascinating one; from a chaotic perspective it is a subject ripe with the possibilities of patterned order within disorder.

Symbolic Capital and Gender: Evidence from Two Cultural Fields

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Field Structure ◽  
Symbolic Boundaries ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Symbolic Boundary

This article builds a gendered understanding of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital. Through a comparison of two cultural fields – the heavy metal scene and the contemporary folk scene in Toronto, Canada – I show that field structure impacts the extent to which gendered dispositions (which we can understand as masculine capital and feminine capital) are exchangeable for symbolic capital, or reputation. Using semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis, and participant observation, I highlight two features of the fields that shape the extent to which masculine and feminine capital produce symbolic capital: the degree to which symbolic capital is institutionalized, and the level of symbolic boundary-drawing in the field. The heavy metal field’s low institutionalization of symbolic capital and high symbolic boundaries heighten the salience of gender as a basis of symbolic capital, while the folk field’s high institutionalization of symbolic capital and low symbolic boundary-drawing reduce the extent to which gender matters.

Acting Their Age? An Intersectional Approach on Young Motherhood From Young Mothers’ Perspectives

Affilia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-484
Author(s):  
Marijke Sniekers ◽  
Els Rommes
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Young Mothers ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Child Centered ◽  
And Gender

This article challenges the assumptions in social policy and practice of how the combination of youth and motherhood is problematic and morally wrong. Using an intersectional approach, this study uncovers how young mothers’ social categories of youth and motherhood collide, concur with, or reinforce each other. The research question is the following: What are young mothers’ perceptions and practices of youth when combining youth with motherhood? The research methods include 18 months of participant observation and 41 semi-structured interviews with young mothers in the Netherlands. Analysis shows that young motherhood should not be conflated with problematic motherhood. Young mothers position themselves as “new” parents, single mothers, and working parents. Their motherhood practices illustrate adherence to an ideology of child-centered, omnipresent, and responsible motherhood. They might not be good girls, but they show they are good mothers. Young mothers navigate intersecting dimensions of youth, age, motherhood, and gender through (1) discontinuing youth practices, (2) alternating between motherhood and youthfulness, (3) transforming youth practices into young motherhood practices, and (4) reinforcing youth through young motherhood. Professionals can use the strengths of these practices more to the advantage of the youth to provide support that is tailored to clients’ needs.

scholarly journals Let's Get Organised: Practicing and Valuing Scientific Work inside and outside the Laboratory

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Garforth ◽  
Anne Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
Women And Science ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Uk

Over the past thirty years there has been a significant turn towards practice and away from institutions in sociological frameworks for understanding science. This new emphasis on studying ‘science in action’ ( LATOUR 1987 ) and ‘epistemic cultures’ ( KNORR CETINA 1999 ) has not been shared by academic and policy literatures on the problem of women and science, which have focused on the marginalisation and under-representation of women in science careers and academic institutions. In this paper we draw on elements of both these approaches to think about epistemic communities as simultaneously practical and organisational. We argue that an understanding of organisational structures is missing in science studies, and that studies of the under-representation of women lack attention to the detail of how scientific work is done in practice. Both are necessary to understand the gendering of science work. Our arguments are based on findings of a qualitative study of bioscience researchers in a British university. Conducted as part of a European project on knowledge production, institutions and gender the UK study involved interviews, focus groups and participant observation in two laboratories. Drawing on extracts from our data we look first at laboratories as relatively unhierarchical communities of practice. We go on to show the ways in which institutional forces, particularly contractual insecurity and the linear career, work to reproduce patterns of gendered inequality. Finally, we analyse how these patterns shape the gendered value and performance of ‘housekeeping work’ in the laboratory.

Portrait of a Human Smuggler

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella E. Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Violent Men ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
And Gender

The hypervisibility of contemporary migration flows has generated significant interest in human smugglers, and reports of their activities are ubiquitous. Smugglers as facilitators of irregular migration are most often characterized as young and violent men from the Global South organized in criminal networks who are responsible for the tragic journeys of migrants around the world. Yet despite their frequent appearance in dramatic migration accounts, smugglers have hardly been the subject of empirical inquiry, which has led to the prevalence of male-centred, racialized, and classist characterizations of their activities. This chapter, drawing from structured interviews and participant observation conducted among twelve women charged with human smuggling offences and twenty-five women who travelled with smuggling facilitators in the US states of Arizona and Utah, situates the narratives of smuggling and its intersections with race, class, and gender in the facilitation of border crossings along the US–Mexico border.

Polyamory in Paris: A social network theory application

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072097532
Author(s):  
Janet Bennion
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Multiple Sexual Partners ◽  
Mitigating Factors ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Multiple Sexual Partnerships ◽  
Cis And Trans

Multiple sexual partnerships can be viewed as networks in order to assess the nature of links between lovers and metamours (lover’s lovers) as well as the larger population. In such non-monogamous networks, where participants share sex, friendship, ideas, and economic resources, there exists a vast web of nodes connected in much more intimate and complex ways than one finds in the mono-normative landscape. This study explored gender dynamics in network centrality on a sample of 62 polyamorists in Paris, France using participant-observation, informal and structured interviews, and social network analysis. Though evolutionary psychology and pornographic film tend to reinforce heteronormative stereotypes of males as central social actors with multiple sexual partners and women as sexually passive, feminist theorists have argued for a more “agentic female sexual subjectivity”. My data showed that cis- and trans-women, with a strong sense of family and skills in interpersonal communication, score highest on network metrics of density/degree, homophily, indirectedness, and transitivity. The network data also indicate high modularity and endogamy with clustering tendencies for both cis-men and cis- and trans-women linked to kink, atypical intelligence, sexual and gender non-conformity, and mitigating factors of socioeconomic advantage and racial privilege.

Constructing and performing hotel hospitality culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Kirsti Margrethe Laerdal ◽  
Catherine Palmer ◽  
Jo-Anne Lester
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Sampling Strategy ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Literature Base ◽  
And Performance

This article discusses the social processes underpinning the co-construction and performance of hotel hospitality culture. The influence of culture within the hospitality sector has inspired conceptual and empirical research resulting in a significant literature base. However, gaps remain in understanding how culture manifests itself through behaviour in the publicly accessible areas of a hotel. This gap was addressed by research designed to uncover the social processes and behavioural dynamics underpinning the construction of hotel culture/s. Informed by social constructionism, a purposeful sampling strategy and a range of qualitative methods were employed: participant observation, a fieldwork diary recording observations of behavioural encounters, conversational and semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that hotel hospitality culture is co-constructed and performed through interactions between people. Two distinct hotel cultures emerged, Second home/extended family and Corporate leisure. The findings provide a deeper, more holistic understanding of how hospitality culture is brought to life in hotels through the taken-for-granted social encounters between people, encounters wherein hospitality is given, received and experienced.

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